Wow. I mean … wow. According to the Centers for Disease
Control, less than 4 percent of hospitals give moms the
support they need to start off breastfeeding right. And
only 14 percent of women exclusively breastfeed for the 6 months recommended by
the World Health Organization. Our breastfeeding map also showed how little most of us nurse our
kids.

That is not a lot of breastfeeding. That is not a
lot of support. And you can call the CDC a lot of things, but a hippie
lactivist fringe operation is most decidedly not one of them. If a
relatively conservative government organization thinks breastfeeders are an
endangered species, I believe ‘em.

Looking at this report, I seriously can’t believe what I’m reading. Eighty
percent of hospitals give babies formula, water, or sugar-water (!!!) as a
matter of routine. Only half offer skin-to-skin contact in the first hour after
birth. Only one-third allow the baby to stay in your room.

Worst of all,
almost 75 percent of hospitals don’t provide at-home breastfeeding support after
the moms go home. Remember, back in the olden days (when I was born), moms
stayed at the hospital for five days after childbirth, so if they chose to
breastfeed, there were nurses all around to help. Not that they did, my mom
tells me: “I was the only person in Brooklyn nursing,” she tells me, “and if it
hadn’t worked for me, I don’t know what I would have done.”

Contrast
that with my experience – I had a Miracle Bra's worth of
lactation support. Though Penelope was whisked off the NICU after her birth, a
lactation consultant was in my room within a half hour of my arrival there,
wheeling in a pump so I could get started and store my colostrum. Few things can
make a gal feel more powerless than not being able to hold her premature baby.
But here was something powerful I could do: start storing the milk she would
soon be able to drink.

At home, I found my supply dropping drastically,
both as a function of my being too lazy to get up at 3 a.m. to pump and of my
missing a day of pumping because I was hospitalized with preeclampsia after
delivery (you heard that right!). There was an LC assigned specifically to the
NICU moms, a volunteer with a cart selling breastfeeding support items (like
bras, flanges and fenugreek), pumps for me to borrow, and rooms I could go into
to pump privately if I didn’t want to do so at my baby’s bedside.

I also
had tons of moms around me, friends and neighbors willing to grab my hooter and
smoosh it into the baby’s mouth, tuck a finger under my baby’s chin to feel that
she was swallowing properly, or send me their leftover Soothies.

The
ones who felt like freaks were the ones who formula fed, and
they complained all the time about being made to feel bad about not
exclusively breastfeeding. And I could see where they were
coming from: for every supportive comment, there are just as many stories of
scolding, finger-wagging nasties saying you just didn’t work hard enough.

But: Aren’t there those same nasties out there with regard to anything?
You get lung cancer, there’s always someone asking, pointedly, if you smoked.
You have cupcakes at your kid’s birthday party, and someone asks if you aren’t
worried about all that sugar and artificial coloring. You develop diabetes, and
suddenly everyone you know is an expert on what is allowed on your plate.
Breastfeeding isn’t the sole refuge of the nosy looky-loo judgeybitch.
It’s just the one that gets emailed around the most.

I’m depressed by this report. I’m upset that so many women don’t have access
to the amazing hospitals in my area. I’m sorrowful for women who are made to
feel like freaks for breastfeeding. And I’m pissed that we can’t talk about
changing that without the discussion devolving into infighting and
name-calling.

The discussion of the report devolved into the same ugly
arguments: “La Leche League volunteers were mean to me!” “Boob
Nazis are mean!” “I couldn’t breastfeed, and you’re making ME feel bad when you
say this!” For crap’s sake, people. Can’t we just agree to help women
who want to breastfeed achieve their goal without taking it
personally?

Some people might quote Rodney King and say “Can’t we all just get along?”
But I prefer to quote Wendy Wasserstein. “I don’t blame any of us. We’re all
concerned, intelligent women. It’s just that I feel stranded. And I thought the
whole point was that we wouldn’t feel stranded. I thought the point was, we were
all in this together.”

So. How can we make meaningful
changes in how women are supported as they begin motherhood, together?

Replies

Part of the problem is that there are at least as many books that say 'it makes no difference' and 'it's not an important choice' as there are books with high-quality information.

Ditto for 'experts' and websites and professionals.

Support is much the same: there is as much support for moms who 'choose' not to breastfeed, including justification of their reasons, villification of the breastfeeding 'nazis', and refuting hard science with personal experience (like 'my babies were fine') as if data were the plural of 'anecdote.'

Quoting usmclife58:

I find it hard to believe that the decline is due to a lack of information. I think it has more to do with a person's desire to bf. The information is out there, readily available, one just needs to look for it. Support is also available -you can find all sorts on CM, FB, etc.

Now, medical staff and such may be a part of the problem as well. Not giving the professional support that is needed, or giving wrong information (I really hate when they do that!).

I have never read a book that said it makes no difference, or that it is not an important choice. Every book I read has said the opposite. Everything I have read has said the BF is better, but FF is an acceptable choice.

Experts... Well... They vary. Some tell the truth, some tell *their* truth.

You can find support if you need it. Why can't a mother that FF get support? Why can't a mother that decides to stop BF'ing be able to get support? A mother should get support, whatver kind she needs.

Quoting LindaClement:

Part of the problem is that there are at least as many books that say 'it makes no difference' and 'it's not an important choice' as there are books with high-quality information.

Ditto for 'experts' and websites and professionals.

Support is much the same: there is as much support for moms who 'choose' not to breastfeed, including justification of their reasons, villification of the breastfeeding 'nazis', and refuting hard science with personal experience (like 'my babies were fine') as if data were the plural of 'anecdote.'

Quoting usmclife58:

I find it hard to believe that the decline is due to a lack of information. I think it has more to do with a person's desire to bf. The information is out there, readily available, one just needs to look for it. Support is also available -you can find all sorts on CM, FB, etc.

Now, medical staff and such may be a part of the problem as well. Not giving the professional support that is needed, or giving wrong information (I really hate when they do that!).

Wow that is crazy! I think there isn't enough information out there about breastfeeding, yes there are some flyers in hospitals but how good is that when people go to wic and get bombarded with formula. (happened to me personally). There could be more breastfeeding seminars or something to get the information out there. I wasn't going to breastfeed because my mothers influence on me; however, my husband is the one who gave me the push to nurse and i've nursed all four of my kids. One for 7 weeks, one for 2 weeks (thrush and other complications), 16 months and 11 months and still going :)

That you have never read a book of that kind is unrelated to just how prevelant those books are. Perhaps you have a more selective collection of books than you realize?

I'm not suggesting that FF moms don't need or deserve support... what they do not need is to be lied to, to have the lies of others covered up, or to be encouraged or supported in the lies they tell as justification when they feel uncomfortable about their own choices, if that's their issue.

It's one thing to say 'I don't feel that those risks are very important to my child's well-being' and quite a different thing to say 'those risks don't exist.'

It's like claiming that for you, driving is free from any risk of being in a car accident, because you haven't ever been in a car accident.

I put 'support' in quotations because it is not supportive to enable dysfunctional behaviour like denial. It is the opposite of support. When mom knows she's been scammed, it does her no good whatsoever to have someone else support the scammer --even if for a passing moment it helps mom feel less gullible, or less angry about her gullibility.

Quoting usmclife58:

I have never read a book that said it makes no difference, or that it is not an important choice. Every book I read has said the opposite. Everything I have read has said the BF is better, but FF is an acceptable choice.

Experts... Well... They vary. Some tell the truth, some tell *their* truth.

You can find support if you need it. Why can't a mother that FF get support? Why can't a mother that decides to stop BF'ing be able to get support? A mother should get support, whatver kind she needs.

Quoting LindaClement:

Part of the problem is that there are at least as many books that say 'it makes no difference' and 'it's not an important choice' as there are books with high-quality information.

Ditto for 'experts' and websites and professionals.

Support is much the same: there is as much support for moms who 'choose' not to breastfeed, including justification of their reasons, villification of the breastfeeding 'nazis', and refuting hard science with personal experience (like 'my babies were fine') as if data were the plural of 'anecdote.'

Quoting usmclife58:

I find it hard to believe that the decline is due to a lack of information. I think it has more to do with a person's desire to bf. The information is out there, readily available, one just needs to look for it. Support is also available -you can find all sorts on CM, FB, etc.

Now, medical staff and such may be a part of the problem as well. Not giving the professional support that is needed, or giving wrong information (I really hate when they do that!).

My daughter breast fed the first baby for about 2 months and then he got really sick and was in the hospital for about 2 weeks so she had to stop breastfeeding. The second baby she is breastfeeding now and he is 11 months old.